Archaeological and ethnological studies in Udmurtia

The article is devoted to the history of archaeological and ethnological research in Udmurtia, which was star¬ted by pre-revolutionary scholars. The archaeologists A.P. Smirnov and V.F. Gening, their followers and disciples, followed this tradition. Contemporary extensive archaeological research conducted in the Kama-Vyatka region in the late 20th and early 21st cc. made it possible to collect a considerable archaeological material referring to the basic periods of the history and culture of the local population from the Mesolithic up to the 19th century. These data were intensively published as individual and collective monographs. Utilization of written sources, toponymy, folklore and ethnography data helped to interpret archaeological materials that promoted quantitative accumulation of ethno-archaeological observations. As a result, favorable conditions for purposeful ethno-archaeological research on the problems of religious beliefs and traditions were prepared. Similar systematic work aimed at the integration of archaeological and ethnographic knowledge has been conducted in Udmurtia since the 1990s in accordance with three main directions: 1) studies of the later period (16-17th-century) Udmurt cemeteries based on these materials comparison and correlation with both medieval (6th to 13th centuries) archaeology data and historical and folklore-ethnographic sources of the late 18th – early 20th centuries; 2) studies of the cult monuments (shrines, burial grounds, ritual objects) dating from the Middle Ages to the present also based upon the methods of parallel collection and interpretation of archaeological, folklore and ethnographic information; 3) reconstruction of cultural and sacral landscapes of individual local districts in the framework of the periods under consideration.